There is nothing that should work about today’s restaurant. Not. A. Thing. Restaurant consultants would be ripping their hair out by the roots. There’s the, um, idiosyncratic name. And the location, formerly home to Leeds’ last great fayn daynin’ hope, Anthony Flinn, above a posh clothes shop. A clipboarded chap points you to the lift through the rails of McQueen and Moschino; you exit into a long, echoey room tricked up to look like a cross between edgy gallery and 50s frat house. Someone has gone mad with the graffiti.
Then there’s chef/owner, Michael O’Hare, who looks more like an escapee from Mötley Crüe than a chap whose cerebral, risk-taking approach to food is making the city’s burghers gasp and stretch their eyes. And the food? Bonkers. Engagingly bonkers. Much of it defies logic: smoked mackerel parfait dusted with chocolatey roasted coffee powder, shaped into bonbons and served in a decorative cup full of coffee beans. A pudding that features butternut squash, a rubble of walnut and a slick of vivid, emerald chive oil. Sweetbreads, creamy inside and almost KFC-crisp out, come with radishes cooked in pomegranate molasses until fondant-soft and caramelly, their peppery leaves adding welcome sting. But, mostly, O’Hare pulls it off.
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